> The context is good error messages; what you’re saying is that DWYM (do what you mean) is even better than a good error message.
I'm not sure that's true. "Just do what I mean" is an understandable response when you get an error message that hints that the program knew exactly what you meant. It feels like a human responding to "Can I have some water?" with "I don't know CAN you?", but it ignores the fact that the program doesn't really know what the user meant. Sure whoever authored the Python interpreter guessed that 99% of the time if you type `exit` you want to leave, but if they just assume that, then what happens if I'm actually trying to see what's in a variable `ext` (short for extension) and my fingers just auto completed `exit` because it's something I type so frequently (this kind of typo happens to me all the time). Suddenly the interpreter is dead and I have to start over on whatever I was doing.
I'd actually rather the program gives me instruction on how to what it thinks I want to do, and let me decide if it's really what I mean.
I'm not sure that's true. "Just do what I mean" is an understandable response when you get an error message that hints that the program knew exactly what you meant. It feels like a human responding to "Can I have some water?" with "I don't know CAN you?", but it ignores the fact that the program doesn't really know what the user meant. Sure whoever authored the Python interpreter guessed that 99% of the time if you type `exit` you want to leave, but if they just assume that, then what happens if I'm actually trying to see what's in a variable `ext` (short for extension) and my fingers just auto completed `exit` because it's something I type so frequently (this kind of typo happens to me all the time). Suddenly the interpreter is dead and I have to start over on whatever I was doing.
I'd actually rather the program gives me instruction on how to what it thinks I want to do, and let me decide if it's really what I mean.